Smyth, Albert H., 1863-1907

John Bigelow (1817-1911) was a diplomat, editor and author. Appointed American consul-general at Paris in 1861, he became U.S. minister to France in April 1865. Bigelow had a special interest in French history and biography. His Life of Benjamin Franklin (1874) reproduced the founding father’s famous Autobiography from a manuscript he discovered and first printed in 1868. His editorial triumph was an edition of the Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin (10 vols., 1887-88). He also edited the Writings and Speeches of Samuel J. Tilden (1885, 1908). Bigelow was born on November 25, 1817, the son of Asa Bigelow and Lucy Isham. He attended Washington (now Trinity) College in Hartford, CT, but left in his junior year for Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., where he graduated in 1835. Three years later in 1838 he was admitted to the bar, and obtained public office as an inspector of Sing Sing prison. In 1844 Bigelow joined the Free-Soil Democrats, largely due to the influence of Samuel J. Tilden. In 1848 he was invited by William Cullen Bryant to become part owner and editor of the New York Evening Post . In this position, which he held until 1861, Bigelow was uncompromising in his advocacy of abolition and free trade.

On a visit to Europe in 1858, Bigelow befriended Richard Cobden, John Bright, William M. Thackeray and Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, who paved the way for his success as an American diplomat. He won an appointment as consul-general in Paris in 1861, and at the end of the Civil War he became the American minister to France, a position he held until September of 1866. While in Europe Bigelow established close personal ties to the press in France, Austria and Germany. He provided a corrective lens to the European outlook, that was dependent upon Great Britain for American news. In this way he overcame British propaganda favoring the Confederacy, and exposed and defeated a scheme to gain French support for the American South. He also warned Louis Napoleon against supporting the European imperial adventure in Mexico, while urging a slow response by Washington.

Bigelow returned to the United States in 1867, but held no political office until 1875, when Governor Samuel J. Tilden appointed him to the commission that broke up the New York canal ring. The same year he was elected New York secretary of state, an office he held for only one term. Afterwards, with the exception of appointments as U.S. commissioner to the Brussels Exposition of 1888 and as a delegate to the New York constitutional convention in 1893, Bigelow devoted himself to writing and editing. He died on December 19, 1911.

From the guide to the John Bigelow correspondence, 1888-1906, 1888-1906, (American Philosophical Society)