CURTIN ANDREW GREGG (1817-1894), American political leader, was born at Bellefonte, Centre county, Pennsylvania, on the 22nd of April 1817, the son of a native of Ireland who was a pioneer iron manufacturer in Pennsylvania. He graduated from the law department of Dickinson College in 1837, was admitted to the bar in 1839, and successfully practised his profession. Entering politics as a Whig, he was chairman of the Whig state central committee in 1854, and from 1855 to 1858 was secretary of the commonwealth. In this capacity he was also ex officio the superintendent of common schools, and rendered valuable services to his state in perfecting and expanding the free public school system, and in establishing state normal schools. Upon the organization of the Republican party he became one of its leaders in Pennsylvania, and in October 1860 was chosen governor of the state on its ticket, defeating Henry D. Foster, the candidate upon whom the Douglas and Breckinridge Democrats and the Constitutional Unionists had united, by 32,000 votes, after a spirited campaign which was watched with intense interest by the entire country as an index of the result of the ensuing presidential election. During the Civil War he was one of the closest and most constant advisers of President Lincoln, and one of the most efficient, most energetic and most patriotic of the “war governors” of the North. Pennsylvania troops were the first to reach Washington after the president’s call, and from first to last the state, under Governor Curtin’s guidance, furnished 387,284 officers and men to the Northern armies. One of his wisest and most praiseworthy acts Was the organization of the famous “Pennsylvania Reserves,” by means of which the state was always able to fill at once its required quota after each successive call. In raising funds and equipping and supplying troops the governor showed great energy and resourcefulness, and his plans and organizations for caring for the needy widows and children of Pennsylvania soldiers killed in battle, and for aiding and removing to their homes the sick and wounded were widely copied throughout the North. He was re-elected governor in 1863 and served until January 1867. He was United States minister to Russia from 1869 until 1872, when he returned to America and took part in the Liberal Republican revolt against President U. S. Grant. In 1872-1873 he was a member of the state constitutional convention. Subsequently he joined the Democratic party and was a representative in Congress from 1881 to 1887. He died at his birthplace, Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, on the 7th of October 1894.
See William H. Egle’s Life and Times of Andrew Gregg Curtin (Philadelphia, 1896), which contains chapters written by A. K. McClure, Jno. Russell Young, Wayne McVeagh, Fitz John Porter and others.
CURTIS, GEORGE TICKNOR (1812-1894), American lawyer, legal writer and constitutional historian, was born in Watertown, Massachusetts, on the 28th of November 1812. He graduated at Harvard in 1832, was admitted to the bar in 1836, and practised in Worcester, Boston, New York and Washington, appearing before the United States Supreme Court in many important cases, including the Dred Scott case, in which he argued the constitutional question for Scott, and the “legal tender” cases. In Boston he was for many years the United States commissioner, and in this capacity, despite the vigorous protests of the abolitionists and his own opposition to slavery, ordered the return to his owner of the famous fugitive slave, Themas Sims, in 1852. He was the nephew and close friend of George Ticknor, the historian of Spanish literature, and his association with his uncle was influential in developing his scholarly tastes; while his other personal friendships with eminent Bostonians during the period of conservative Whig ascendancy in Massachusetts politics were of direct influence upon his political opinions and published estimates. He is best known as the author of A History of the Origin, Formation and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States, with Notices of its principal Framers (1854), republished, with many additions, as The Constitutional History of the United States from their Declaration of Independence to the Close of their Civil War (2 vols., 1889-1896). This history, which had been watched in its earlier progress by Daniel Webster, may be said to present the old Federalist or “Webster-Whig” view of the formation and powers of the Constitution; and it was natural that Curtis should follow it with a voluminous Life of Daniel Webster (2 vols., 1870), the most valuable biography of that statesman. Both these works are characterized by solidity and comprehensiveness rather than by rhetorical attractiveness or literary perspective. In his later years Mr Curtis, like so many of the followers of Webster, turned towards the Democratic party; and he wrote, among other works of minor importance, an exculpatory life of President James Buchanan (2 vols., 1883) and two vindications of General George B. McClellan’s career (1886 and 1887). He died in New York on the 28th of March 1894.
In addition to the works above mentioned he published: Digest of the English and American Admiralty Decisions (1839); Rights and Duties of Merchant Seamen (1841), which elicited the hearty praise of Justice Joseph Story; Law of Patents (1849); Equity Precedents (1850); Commentaries on the Jurisprudence, Practice and Peculiar Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States (1854-1858); Creation or Evolution: A Philosophical Inquiry (1887); and a novel, John Chambers: A Tale of the Civil War in America (1889).
His brother, Benjamin Robbins Curtis (1809-1874), also an eminent jurist, was born on the 4th of November 1809, in Watertown, Massachusetts, graduated at Harvard in 1829, studied law at Cambridge and at Northfield, Mass., where, after his admission to the bar in 1832, he practised law for two years, and then in Boston in 1834-1851. In 1851, being then a member of the lower house of the Massachusetts legislature, he was on the 22nd of September appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States, where he gained his greatest fame in 1857 by his dissenting opinion in the Dred Scott case, in which he argued that the Missouri Compromise was constitutional, and that negroes could become citizens. His argument was immediately published as an anti-slavery document. On the 1st of September 1857 he resigned from the Supreme Court and resumed his private practice. In 1868 he was one of the counsel for President Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial, and opened for the defence in a remarkable two-days’ speech. He died at Newport, Rhode Island, on the 15th of September 1874. He prepared Decisions of the Supreme Court (22 vols.) and a Digest of its decisions down to 1854.
A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, with Some of his Professional and Miscellaneous Papers, edited by his son Benjamin R. Curtis, was published at Boston in 1879, the Memoir being by George Ticknor Curtis.
CURTIS, GEORGE WILLIAM (1824-1892), American man of letters, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on the 24th of February 1824, of old New England stock. His mother died when he was two years old. At six he was sent with his elder brother to school in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, where he remained for five years. Then, his father having again married happily, the boys were brought home to Providence, where they stayed till, in 1839, their father removed to New York. Three years later, Curtis, being allowed to determine for himself his course of life, and being in sympathy with the spirit of the so-called Transcendental movement, became a boarder at the community of Brook Farm. He was accompanied by his brother, James Burrill Curtis, whose influence upon him was strong and helpful. He remained there for two years, brought into stimulating and serviceable relations with many interesting men and women. Then came two years, passed partly in New York, partly in Concord in order mainly to be in the friendly neighbourhood of Emerson, and then followed four years spent in Europe, Egypt and Syria.