Everett, Edward, 1794-1865

U.S. senator and representative, from Massachusetts; president of Harvard (1846-1849); Secretary of State (1852-1853).

American educator and statesman.

Everett was an American statesman, clergyman, and orator, as well as professor of Greek at Harvard University and president of Harvard University, 1846-49.

Unitarian minister; professor of Greek at Harvard; member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1825-1835; governor of Massachusetts, 1836- 1840; U.S. minister to Great Britain, 1841-1845; president of Harvard, 1846-1849; U.S. secretary of state, 1852-1853; and U.S. senator, 1853-1854; from Massachusetts.

Edward Everett was an orator, a Unitarian clergyman, and a teacher; spoke before Lincoln at Gettysburg dedication.

Everett was a Whig politician from Massachusetts and served in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate; he also was U.S. Secretary of State under Millard Fillmore, governor of Massachusetts, and president of Harvard University at various times in his career.

Orator, public servant (Congressman, Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to the Court of St. James, Secretary of State, and U.S. Senator), President of Harvard College. Studied in Europe from 1815 to 1819 (in 1817 received the first Ph. D. awarded by Universität Göttingen to an American). From 1819 to 1825, taught Classics at Harvard, where one of his pupils was Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Edward Everett was the quintessential 19th century Bostonian man of letters. He was an accomplished preacher and orator, classical scholar, editor and critic, politician and diplomat. He served as President of Harvard and Secretary of State, and personified the Puritan ethic.

Everett was an American statesman, clergyman, and orator, as well as professor of Greek at Harvard University and president of Harvard University, 1846-1849.

Unitarian minister, educator (professor of Greek at and later President of Harvard), and statesman.

American statesman and orator.

American statesman (Gov. of Massachusetts).

Virgil David was president of the Lawrenceville Lyceum in Western Pennsylvania.

Clergyman, educator, and statesman. AB Harvard, 1811, Ph.D. Göttingen, 1817; U.S. congressman (Mass.), 1825-1835; president of Harvard, 1836-1840 and 1846-1849; U.S. minister to Great Britain, 1841-1845; U.S. senator (Mass.), 1853-1854. Born 11 Apr. 1794, Dorchester, Mass. Died 15 Jan. 1865, Boston, Mass.

American Unitarian clergyman, orator and statesman.

Edward Everett, an American Statesman, was born in Dorchester, Mass., on April 11, 1794. He graduated from Harvard University in 1811. He was elected to Congress, served as Governor of Massachusetts (1835-1838), was president of Harvard University (1846-1849), Secretary of State (1852), and United States Senator (1853-1854). He died in Boston on January 15, 1865.

Massachusetts minister, educator and statesman; Massachusetts congressman, 1825-1835; governor, 1836-1840; president, Harvard University, 1846-1849; U.S. secretary of state, 1852-1853; Massachusetts senator, 1853- 1854.

Edward Everett (1794-1865) served as a Congressman from Massachusetts from 1825 to 1835, as the Governor of Massachusetts from 1836 to 1839, as the President of Harvard College from 1846 to 1849, as U.S. Secretary of State from 1852 to 1853, and as a Senator from Massachusetts from 1853 to 1854. In 1860 he was a candidate for Vice-President. His published works include numerous addresses and political commentaries.

American politician; born Boston, April 11, 1794; died Boston, January 15, 1865.

American educator, orator, and statesman; minister to Great Britain, 1841-1845.

Unitarian clergyman, educator, and statesman.

American Unitarian clergyman, orator, & statesman.

Educator, U.S. secretary of state, and diplomat.

Edward Everett was a U.S. Representative for Massachusetts (1825-1835), Governor of Massachusetts (1836-1840), U.S. Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain (1841-1845), president of Harvard University (1846-1849), U.S. Secretary of State (1852-1853), and U.S. Senator for Massachusetts (1853-1854).

Clergyman, orator, governor of Massachusetts, U.S. representative and senator, educator, diplomat, and U.S. secretary of state.

Edward Everett (1794-1865) was President of Harvard University from February 5, 1846 to February 1, 1849. He was also a Unitarian clergyman, teacher, statesman, and a famous American orator.

Edward Everett (1794-1865) of Massachusetts was a Unitarian minister; professor of Greek at Harvard University; member of the United States House of Representatives, 1825-1835; governor of Massachusetts, 1836-1840; United States minister to Great Britain, 1841-1845; president of Harvard, 1846-1849; United States secretary of state, 1852-1853; and United States senator, 1853-1854.

Edward Everett was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard with highest honors in 1811, completing an M.A. in Divinity in 1814. After a brief stint as a minister, Harvard offered him the newly created position of Professor of Greek; brilliant but untrained, Everett went to Göttingen to prepare for the role, becoming the first American to earn a Ph.D. He served as professor and editor of the North American Review, inspiring such students as Ralph Waldo Emerson, before turning to politics. He served in the United States House of Representatives, helped form the Whig Party, and served four one-year terms as Governor of Massachusetts, losing a fifth term by one vote. He served as Minister to Britain before returning briefly to Harvard as President; he left this post to finish Daniel Webster's term as Secretary of State, and later served in the United States Senate. Versatile, energetic, and brilliant, he was known as the premier orator of his generation.

Charles Babbage was a mathematician and inventor.

Massachusetts minister, educator and statesman; Massachusetts congressman, 1825-1835; governor, 1836-1840; president, Harvard University, 1846-1849; U.S. secretary of state, 1852-1853; Massachusetts senator, 1853-1854.

Edward Everett (1794-1865) was President of Harvard University from February 5, 1846 to February 1, 1849. He was also a Unitarian clergyman, teacher, statesman, and a renowned American orator.

Edward Everett was born to the Reverend Oliver Everett and Lucy (Hill) Everett on April 11, 1794. As a boy, Everett read extensively in his father's large library, reading the works of Shakespeare, Hume, Tillotson, and Shaftesbury before he was eight years old. In 1804, Everett attended the Webster School and was taught by Daniel Webster. Everett was to maintain a personal and professional relationship with Webster for the rest of his life. From 1805 to 1807 Everett went to the Boston Latin School and the Phillips Exeter Academy. As a young student, Everett earned several medals for outstanding scholarship.

In 1807, Everett entered Harvard University at the age of thirteen, the youngest member of his class. During his college years, Everett was acknowledged by peers and faculty as a serious scholar. He spent his student years as a tutor giving Latin instruction (1812-1814) and studying theology, foreign languages, and writing for student publications. After graduation (A.B. 1811, A.M. 1814), Everett followed in his father's footsteps and became the pastor of the Brattle Street Church. He was quickly recognized as a powerful speaker and orator, but Everett soon abandoned the ministry for a teaching position at Harvard University. Later in life, Everett admitted that he had accepted the Brattle Street ministry at too early an age and without enough life experience to properly minister to his congregation.

Everett's teaching arrangement with Harvard University was unique. He was allowed to travel and study in Europe for two years, at full salary, before accepting his new duties. Everett studied 12 to14 hours a day at the University of Göttingen in Germany. He became well-read in Greek, Latin, French, German, and Italian. He explored Roman law and archaeology, and studied Cicero, Plato, and Greek art. Everett traveled to England and France, bought books for Thomas Jefferson, and became the first American to receive a German Ph.D.

Everett hoped to bring the fruits of German scholarship to Harvard University as a Professor of Greek Literature (1819-1825). Everett, however, was not as successful as he had envisioned and found himself very unhappy drilling college boys in the uses of grammar. Consequently, Everett resigned his professorship after only five years and decided to pursue a new interest that he had begun to cultivate, politics.

Everett's political career began when he was elected to the United States Congress from Massachusetts in 1825. For the next ten years, Everett served the interests of the conservative wing of the Whig party, favoring the propertied classes and supporting a well-ordered and secure state. In Congress, Everett became a noted speaker and emphasized the virtues of a republican form of government and a strong union for the citizens of the new nation. Serving at a time when slavery was becoming an increasingly polarizing issue in national politics, Everett showed a deference to Southern interests. Although opposed to slavery, he recognized the political situation that prompted its recognition and believed that any premature attempts to abolish it would lead to war and disunion.

Everett returned to Massachusetts in 1836 and was elected to the governorship. During his three years of service, Everett made a significant contribution to educational reform. Believing that progress could only be achieved in society if the moral and cognitive capacities of the citizenry could be developed, Everett wanted to turn Massachusetts into a laboratory for public education. Among Everett's most important accomplishments was the creation of a state board of education to monitor schools and to encourage sound instructional practices. In addition, he supported the creation of normal schools to help train teachers, and he signed a law mandating three months of day school for all children under the age of fifteen years old.

After the completion of his final term of office, Everett and his family spent a year in Europe resting and traveling. At the urging of his longtime friend and associate, Daniel Webster, Everett was appointed Minister to the Court of Saint James's in 1841. Serving in Great Britain for four years, Everett became a well-liked and respected diplomat. He helped improve relations between the United States and Great Britain. He was involved in settling a border dispute between Canada and the United States and worked to ease tensions between the United States and Great Britain over the seizure of United States ships by Great Britain during the latter's attempts to eliminate the slave trade. Everett's successful stay in Great Britain came to an end with the Democratic Party's assumption of power in Washington D.C. Out of work, he looked again towards his old school, Harvard University.

Everett assumed the presidency of Harvard University reluctantly and viewed the position as an opportunity to fill his time before reentering politics. Moreover, because he did not want to take time away from his writing and studies, he shied away from his administrative responsibilities.

Everett continually complained about the poor state of the school that he inherited from his predecessor. Attendance and student behavior in chapel were poor, student disruptions were endemic, drunkenness was commonplace, bonfires and the appearance of prostitutes in the Yard were a regular occurrence, and the buildings were in need of repair. Everett was bothered by student pranks and felt ill-prepared to deal with immature students and confrontational faculty members. He was named "Old Granny" by the students, hung in effigy in the Yard and found offensive graffiti on the fence outside his home.

Although Everett's short administration was difficult and personally unsatisfying, under his tenure the Lawrence Scientific School was opened. Under the direction of Louis Agassiz, it became a center of post-graduate study and research in the sciences. Furthermore, Everett was successful in enclosing sections of the Yard, increasing the school's endowment, codifying the duties of University librarians for the first time, and completing a thorough revision of the college laws.

Finding the duties and responsibilities of the presidency a burden, Everett resigned the presidency in 1849 when the Whig party returned to power in Washington D.C., and he resumed his political career.

In 1850, Everett came to the aid of his friend, Secretary of State Daniel Webster. He drafted a letter to the Austrian chargé d'affaires in Washington D.C. defending the presence of an American agent to report on the revolution in Hungary. Everett's letter became an important statement of American foreign policy, asserting the right of the United States to extend sympathy to another nation struggling to achieve a popular government. After the death of Webster in 1852, Everett was appointed Secretary of State. Although he served only one year, Everett gained momentary fame when he rejected French overtures to guarantee Spanish sovereignty over the island of Cuba and asserted American interests. He also dispatched Commodore Matthew C. Perry to Japan and settled a dispute with Peru over the Lobos Islands.

Everett returned to electoral politics in 1853 when he was elected to the United States Senate from Massachusetts. His return to office, however, was short-lived and disappointing. He angered anti-slavery supporters by his failing to vote when the Kansas-Nebraska act came before the Senate. The Kansas-Nebraska act was Stephen A. Douglas's proposal to open up Kansas and Nebraska to slavery if the residents in those areas voted for it. Everett revealed that he was ill at the time the vote came before the Congress, but his timidity in the face of the growing anti-slavery controversy and his desire to compromise at all costs to save the Union led to his resignation.

Free from political pursuits, Everett spent the last years of his life traveling the country and promoting the cause of the Union. In 1858, Everett embarked on a campaign to raise funds for the preservation of George Washington's home, Mount Vernon . He traveled the country delivering a lecture about Washington's character and promoting Washington's role in the establishment of the Union. Encouraging his listeners to preserve the Union in the highly charged times in which they lived, Everett spoke 129 times and ultimately turned over $69,064 to the Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union.

When the Civil War began, Everett was a strong supporter of the Union cause. He traveled the North giving numerous speeches and lectures, calling on his listeners to support the war effort. Sometimes Everett spoke twice or more a week. As the most prominent orator of his day, Everett was invited to give the keynote address at the dedication of a national cemetery after the Battle of Gettysburg in November 1863. In his address, Everett connected the heroic struggle for freedom in the classical and modern worlds with the valor and sacrifice demonstrated on America's battlefields. He justified the Union cause and predicted that the North and South would eventually reconcile leading to a restored and stronger Union. Everett's speech lasted two hours, but was eclipsed in history by President Lincoln's three minute, 272-word address.

Everett was a strong supporter of Abraham Lincoln and traveled the country speaking in support of the Union cause in hundreds of venues. In 1864, at the climax of the presidential campaign, Everett was honored at Faneuil Hall in Boston by thousands of people for his efforts. At this event, Everett made his last public address.

Worn out by his activities and travel, Everett's health began to fail and he died on January 15, 1865 of pneumonia.

Edward Everett married Charlotte Gray Brooks, a daughter of a leading Boston businessman, in 1822. They had six children: Anne Gorham (1823), Charlotte Brooks (1825), Grace Webster (1827), Edward Brooks (1830), Henry Sidney (1834), and William (1839).

After Everett's death, the church bells throughout Boston were sounded in his honor. He was remembered as a productive scholar and a spirited public servant and citizen. Known at home and abroad for his intellectual brilliance and abilities, Everett became a champion of public education, the creation of lyceums, literary societies, scientific associations, and self-instruction. Serving as chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Boston Public Library until his death, Everett was a central figure in the Library's establishment. He belonged to several historical and philosophical societies and received many honorary degrees. Finally, Everett's dramatic sense, use of graceful language, and personal magnetism, along with his passionate defense of the Union cause during the Civil War, made him one of the most famous of America's orators.

Recruiting activity for the Union army stepped up a notch with Lincoln's call for 300,000 nine months' troops on August 4th, 1862, particularly under the powerful negative incentive of a draft if quotas were not met. In Boston, the Irish Society made a special pitch to the large, and heavily Democratic Irish immigrant population, initially intending to raise two regiments, but, recognizing the impracticality of raising so large a force, settling on one. Michael Doherty (Chairman), John Leahy, and Patrick Donahoe (Treasurer) coordinated the drive for this all-Irish nine months' regiment, intending to organize it as the 47th Massachusetts Regiment under the command of "Colonel" Frank H. Ward. In their appeals, they made frequent reference to the popular heroes, Michael Corcoran and Thomas Francis Meagher, and they convinced Archbishop Hughes to come out in support of their effort. As nine months' regiments began to form in Boston and the newspapers clamored for the community to work in concert to avoid a draft, the Irish Society sponsored a Grand Rally at Faneuil Hall at 8 o' clock in the evening on September 8th (or 9th, according to the Boston Daily Evening Transcript) to benefit "the only regiment being organized by the Irish Societies of Boston & Vicinity."

The rally began with the introduction of Mayor Wightman by Patrick Donahoe. In a brief presentation, Wightman attempted to raise the patriotic fervor of the audience by noting that Corcoran was raising not a regiment nor brigade, but an entire legion of New York Irishmen. The next speaker, the great orator Edward Everett, gave a rousing speech, playing to the emotions of his audience and their self-image as among the downtrodden and disrespected members of society, and again making special reference to the patriotic examples of Corcoran and Meagher. Capt John Leahy followed with "patriotic resolutions" and the other speakers, Col. A. O. Brewster, Col. E. G. Parker, Col. Ward, Dennis W. O' Brien, and Charles F. Donnelly were said to have given "eloquent speeches" that were enthusiastically greeted. A "band of music" topped off the evening that ended with rousing cheers for Lincoln, McClellan, and the flag.

Despite the apparent success of this gala, recruitment for the Irish regiment was beset with problems and never met expectations. Among other troubles, a man named James Hayes was apparently representing himself as an agent of the Irish Societies and collecting money that he said was to support the regiment, forcing Doherty and Donahoe to place an advertisement in the newspaper disavowing any connection with the man. On September 11th, the regiment was called into camp, intended, by this point to become the 49th Massachusetts Regiment. With the need for regiments to join Bank's expedition immediately, and not having filled out their rolls quickly enough, the enlistees appear to have been brought into the 48th Massachusetts as Companies G, H, I, and K (this inference may be in error, however, since the capsule history of the 48th Regiment in Massachusetts Men in the Civil War suggests that these companies were raised by John O' Brien). Interestingly, Col. Ward does not appear in Massachusetts Men in the Civil War, suggesting that he never received his colonel's commission, nor do any of the other men listed in association with the 1st regiment of Irish nine-month volunteers, except Charles F. Donnelly, who became a Lieutenant in Co. K of the 48th Massachusetts.