John P. Kennedy
John P. Kennedy | |
---|---|
William Fell Giles | |
In office April 25, 1838 – March 3, 1839 | |
Preceded by | Isaac McKim |
Succeeded by | Solomon Hillen Jr. |
Personal details | |
Born | John Pendleton Kennedy October 25, 1795 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
Died | August 18, 1870 Newport, Rhode Island, U.S. | (aged 74)
Political party | Whig |
Spouse(s) | Elizabeth Gray Margaret Hughes |
Education | Baltimore College (BA) |
Military service | |
Allegiance | United States |
Branch/service | United States Army |
Battles/wars | War of 1812 |
John Pendleton Kennedy (October 25, 1795 – August 18, 1870) was an American novelist, lawyer and Whig politician who served as
Kennedy later helped lead the effort to end slavery in Maryland,[1] which, as a non-Confederate state, was not affected by the Emancipation Proclamation and required a state law to free slaves within its borders and to outlaw the furtherance of the practice.[1]
Kennedy also advocated
Early life and education
John Pendleton Kennedy was born in
Kennedy's college studies were interrupted by the War of 1812. He joined the army and in 1814, marched with the United Company of the 5th Baltimore Light Dragoons, known as the "Baltimore 5th," a unit that included rich merchants, lawyers, and other professionals. Kennedy wrote humorous amounts of his military escapades, such as when he lost his boots and marched onward in
Kennedy spent his summers in Martinsburg, Virginia, where he read law under the tutelage of his relative Judge Edmund Pendleton (descendant of the patriot Edmund Pendleton, who sat on the Virginia Court of Appeals).[6] Kennedy would later often allude to genteel life on Southern plantations based on his youthful summers in Martinsburg.[7] Later, Kennedy inherited some money from a rich Philadelphia uncle, and in 1829 married Elizabeth Gray, whose father Edward Gray was a wealthy mill-owner with a country house on the Patapsco River below Ellicott's Mills, and whose monetary generosity would allow Kennedy to effectively withdraw from his law practice for a decade to write.[7]
Literary life
Although admitted to the bar in 1816, he was much more interested in literature and politics than law. He associated with the focal point of Baltimore's literary community, the Delphian Club.[8] Kennedy's first literary attempt was a fortnightly periodical called the Red Book, published anonymously with his roommate Peter Hoffman Cruse from 1819 to 1820.[9] Kennedy published Swallow Barn, or A Sojourn in the Old Dominion in 1832, which would become his best-known work.[10] Horse-Shoe Robinson was published in 1835 to win a permanent place of respect in the history of American fiction.
Kennedy's friends and personal associates included George Henry Calvert, James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, William Gilmore Simms, and William Makepeace Thackeray.[11] Kennedy's journal entries dated September 1858 state that Thackeray asked him for assistance with a chapter in The Virginians;[11] Kennedy then assisted him by contributing scenic written depictions to that chapter.[11]
While sitting round a back parlor table at the home of noted Baltimore literarist, civic leader and friend John H. B. Latrobe at 11 West Mulberry Street, across from the old Baltimore Cathedral in the Mount Vernon, Baltimore neighborhood in October 1833, imbibing some spirits and genial conversation with another friend James H. Miller, they together judged the draft of "MS. Found in a Bottle" from a then-unknown aspiring writer Edgar Allan Poe to be worthy of publishing in the Baltimore Sunday Visitor because of its dark and macabre atmosphere. Also in 1835, he helped later introduce Poe to Thomas Willis White, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.[12]
While abroad, Kennedy became a friend of
Lawyer and politician
Kennedy enjoyed politics more than law (although the Union Bank was a prime client), and left the Democratic Party when he realized that under President Andrew Jackson it came to oppose internal improvements. He thus became an active Whig like his father-in-law and favored Baltimore's commercial interests.[7] He was appointed Secretary of the Legation in Chile on January 27, 1823, but did not proceed to his post, instead resigning on June 23 of the same year. He was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1820 and chaired its committee on internal improvements, championing the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal so vigorously (despite its failure to pay dividends), that he failed to win re-election after his 1823 vote for state support.[7]
In 1838, Kennedy succeeded
Kennedy won re-election to Congress in 1840 and 1842; but, because of his strong opposition to the
Meanwhile, President
Kennedy was proposed as a vice-presidential running mate to Abraham Lincoln when Lincoln first sought the Presidency of the United States,[19] although Kennedy was ultimately not selected. Kennedy became a forceful supporter of the Union during the Civil War, and he supported the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation.[20] Later, since the proclamation did not free Maryland slaves because the state was not in rebellion, he also used his influence to push for legislation in Maryland that ultimately ended slavery there in 1864.[1][20]
In 1853, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.[21]
Position on religious tolerance
Kennedy called for erecting a monument to the founding of the state of Maryland and to the birth of religious freedom in its original colonial settlement in St. Mary's City, Maryland. Three local citizens then expanded on his idea and sought to start a school that would become a "Living Monument" to religious freedom. The school was founded as such a monument in 1840 by order of the state legislature. Its original name was St. Mary's Seminary, but it would later be known as St. Mary's College of Maryland.
All the world outside of these portals was intolerant, proscriptive, vengeful against the children of a dissenting faith. Here only in Maryland, throughout all this wide world of Christendom, was there an altar erected and truly dedicated to the freedom of Christian worship. Let those who first reared it enjoy the renown to which it has entitled them.[22][23]
John Pendleton Kennedy, On memorializing the birth of religious freedom in St. Mary's City Maryland[22][23]
Earlier, when he was in the Maryland state legislature, Kennedy was instrumental in repealing a law that discriminated against Jewish people in court and trial procedures in Maryland. However, he did also advocate setting limits on overall foreign national immigration into Maryland beginning in the 1850s, stating that he felt that the sheer number of new immigrants might overwhelm the economy.
Opposition to slavery
Kennedy's opposition to slavery was first publicly expressed in his writings, and then later in his life as a politician, through his speeches and political initiatives. His opposition to slavery in Maryland can be traced back through many decades of his life, but the depth of that opposition went through an evolution from milder and more understated in the beginning, to being stronger, more vocal and more morally based by the time of the Emancipation Proclamation and then the following state-level effort to end slavery in Maryland, as the state was not included in the Emancipation Proclamation because it was not in the Confederacy.
Kennedy once wrote that witnessing a speech by Frederick Douglass had opened his eyes more fully to the "curse" of slavery, as Kennedy called it by 1863.
Kennedy's 1830s novel Swallow Barn is critical of slavery but also idealizes plantation life. However, the original manuscript shows that some of Kennedy's initial descriptions of plantation life were much more critical of slavery, but that he crossed those out of the manuscript before the book went to the printer, possibly because he was afraid of being too openly critical of slavery while living in Maryland, a slave state.
Historians are not in consensus as to whether his earlier softer opposition to slavery was a way of preventing violent attacks against himself, since he lived in a border state where slavery was still practiced and still widely supported. Outright abolitionism at that time would have been an unpopular and potentially dangerous position in pro-slavery Maryland. Other historians maintain that his views on slavery simply evolved from weaker opposition to stronger opposition.
The novel, although more muted in its criticism of slavery by the time of its publication and also expressing some idyllic stereotypes about plantation life, leads to the prediction that slavery would bring the Southern states to ruin. Swallow Barn was published in 1832, 29 years before the start of the Civil War and long before anyone else was known to predict that the Southern and Northern states were headed for armed conflict.
Civil War
Just prior to the Civil War, Kennedy wrote that abolishing slavery immediately was not worth full-scale civil war and that slavery should instead be ended in stages to avoid war. He noted that civil wars were historically the most bloody and devastating kinds of warfare and suggested a negotiated, phased approach to ending slavery to prevent war between the sections.
But after the war broke out, he returned to a position of outright opposition to slavery and began to call for "immediate emancipation" of slaves. His demands for the end of slavery grew stronger as the war progressed. By the height of the Civil War, when Kennedy's opposition to slavery had become much stronger, he signed his name to a key political pamphlet in Maryland opposing slavery and calling for its immediate end.[1]
There is consensus among historians that Kennedy was critical of slavery to some degree for decades, strongly opposed to slavery by the height of the Civil War, and strongly opposed the Confederacy. In Maryland state politics and charity leadership, Kennedy was also known to help other minority groups, notably Jews and Irish Catholics. When the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in Maryland, Kennedy played a key leadership role in campaigning for the end of slavery in the state.
Because Maryland was not in the Confederacy, the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the state and slavery continued there. (the Union Party was a powerful political party in the state at the time).
At the meeting, Thomas Swann, a state politician, put forward a motion calling for the party to work for "Immediate emancipation (of all slaves) in Maryland".[1] John Pendleton Kennedy spoke next and seconded the motion.[1] Since Kennedy was the former speaker of the Maryland General Assembly, as well as a respected author, his support carried enormous weight in the party. A vote was taken and the motion passed.[1] However the people of Maryland as a whole were by then divided on the issue[27] and so twelve months of campaigning and lobbying on the matter of slavery continued throughout the state.[27] During this effort, Kennedy signed his name to a party pamphlet calling for "immediate emancipation" of all slaves[1] that was widely circulated. On November 1, 1864, after a year-long debate, a state referendum was put forth on the slavery question.[1][20][27] The citizens of Maryland voted to abolish slavery,[27] though only by a 1,000 vote margin,[27] as the Southern part of the state remained heavily dependent on the slave economy.[27]
Work with cultural and educational institutions
Kennedy, in his close association with George Peabody, was instrumental in the establishment of the
Kennedy also played an eseential but unintended role in the establishment of St. Mary's Female Seminary which is now known as St. Mary's College of Maryland, the state's public honors college. Kennedy's used his reputation as a respected Maryland politician and author, to call for designating St. Mary's City as the state's "Living Monument to religious freedom", memorializing its location on the site of Maryland's first colony, which was also considered to be the birthplace of religious freedom in America as well. A few years later three local citizens refined his idea into calling for a school in St. Mary's City that would be the "Living monument". The school continues to have this designation to this day.
Kennedy was the primary initial impetus[28] and was also pivotal in gaining early state recognition of its responsibility for protecting, studying and memorializing St. Mary's City, Maryland[29] (the then-abandoned site of Maryland's first colony and capitol,[29] as well as being the birthplace of religious freedom in America),[29][30][31][32] as a key state historic area, placing historical research and preservation mandates under the original auspices of the new state-sponsored St. Mary's Female Seminary, located on the same site. This planted the early seeds of what would eventually become Historic St. Mary's City, a state-run archeological research and historic interpretation area that exists today on the site of Maryland's original colonial settlement.
Historic St. Mary's City also co-runs (jointly with St. Mary's College of Maryland) the now internationally recognized Historical Archaeology Field School, a descendant of Kennedy's idea that a school should be involved in researching and preserving the remains of colonial St. Mary's City.
During his term as U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Kennedy made the request for the establishment of the United States Naval Academy Band in Annapolis in 1852.[33] The band continues to be active to this day.[33]
Roles in science and technology
Federal study and acceptance of the telegraph
While serving in the United States Congress, John Pendleton Kennedy was the primary and decisive force in Congress in securing $30,000 (an enormous sum at the time) for testing Samuel Morse's
Commissioner of the 1867 Paris Exposition
Kennedy was a commissioner of the
Retirement from public office
Kennedy retired from elected and appointed offices in March 1853 when President Fillmore left office, but he remained very active in both Federal and state of Maryland politics, supporting Fillmore in 1856, when Fillmore won Maryland's electoral votes and Kennedy's brother Anthony won a U.S. Senate seat. His name was mentioned as one of the vice-presidential prospects on the Republican ticket alongside Abraham Lincoln in 1860[35] (which would have meant that Abraham Lincoln would be on the same ticket as a man named "John Kennedy"). Instead, Kennedy was the Maryland chairman of the Constitutional Union Party, which nominated John Bell and Edward Everett for the Presidency.[36] Kennedy played an instrumental leadership role in the Union Party's successful effort to end slavery in Maryland in 1864. This had to be done at the state level because the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the state. At the end of the American Civil War – during which he forcefully supported the Union – he advocated amnesty for former rebels.
During this time, he had a summer home overlooking the south branch of the Patapsco River upstream near Orange Grove-Avalon-Ilchester off the main western line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad now in the area of Patapsco Valley State Park, which was devastated by a disastrous flood in 1868.
Kennedy died in
Legacy
In his will, Kennedy wrote the following:
It is my wish that the manuscript volumes containing my journals, my note or common-place books, and the several volumes of my own letters in press copy, as also all my other letters, such as may possess any interest or value (which I desire to be bound in volumes) that are now in loose sheets, shall be returned to my executors, who are requested to have the same packed away in a strong walnut box, closed and locked, and then delivered to the Peabody Institute, to be preserved by them unopened until the year 1900, when the same shall become the property of the Institute, to be kept among its books and records.[38]
Today there are two large special collections of his papers, manuscripts and correspondence; one remains at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore and the other is at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. There are also a number of libraries from Virginia to Boston that have smaller collections of his correspondence (both private and official letters).
The naval ships
Books and essays
- The Red Book (1818–19, two volumes).
- Swallow Barn: Or, A Sojourn in the Old Dominion (1832) [under the pen-name Mark Littleton].
- Horse-Shoe Robinson: A Tale of the Tory Ascendency in South Carolina, in 1780 (1835).
- Rob of the Bowl: A Legend of St. Inigoe's (1838) [under the pen-name Mark Littleton].
- Annals of Quodlibet [under the pen-name Solomon Secondthoughts] (1840).
- Defence of the Whigs [under the pen-name A Member of the Twenty-seventh Congress] (1844).
- Memoirs of the Life of William Wirt(1849, two volumes).
- The Great Drama: An Appeal to Maryland, Baltimore, reprinted from the Washington National Intelligencer of May 9, 1861.
- The Border States: Their Power and Duty in the Present Disordered Condition of the Country (1861).
- Autograph Leaves of Our Country's Authors[39][40] [anthology,[39][40] co-edited by John P. Kennedy[39][40] and Alexander Bliss[39][40]] (1864)[39]
- Mr. Paul Ambrose's Letters on the Rebellion [under the pen-name Paul Ambrose] (1865).
- Collected Works of John Pendleton Kennedy (1870–72, ten volumes).
- At Home and Abroad: A Series of Essays: With a Journal in Europe in 1867–68 (1872, essays).
Further reading
- Berton, Pierre (1981), Flames across the Border: The Canadian-American Tragedy, 1813-1814, Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown.
- Bohner, Charles H. (1961), John Pendleton Kennedy, Gentleman from Baltimore, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.
- Friedel, Frank (1967), Union Pamphlets of the Civil War, [includes Kennedy's Great Drama], A John Harvard Library Book, Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
- Gwathmey, Edward Moseley (1931), John Pendleton Kennedy, New York: Thomas Nelson.
- Hare, John L. (2002), Will the Circle be Unbroken?: Family and Sectionalism in the Virginia Novels of Kennedy, Caruthers, and Tucker, 1830—1845, New York: Routledge.
- Marine, William Matthew (1913), The British Invasion of Maryland, 1812-1815, Baltimore: Society of the War of 1812 in Maryland.
- Ridgely, Joseph Vincent (1966), John Pendleton Kennedy, New York: Twayne.
- Tuckerman, Henry Theodore (1871), The Life of John Pendleton Kennedy, Collected Works of Henry Theodore Tuckerman, Volume 10, New York: Putnam.
- Black, Andrew R. (2016), "John Pendleton Kennedy, Early American Novelist, Whig Statesman and Ardent Nationalist", Louisiana State University Press, Louisiana.
See also
- History of slavery in Maryland
- International Exposition (1867), the second Worlds Fair, held in Paris, of which Kennedy was a commissioner
References
- ^ ISBN 978-1429753241
- ^ ISBN 0-19-503186-5
- ^ Hubbell, Jay B. The South in American Literature: 1607–1900. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954: 483.
- ^ Pierre Berton (1981), Flames across the Border: The Canadian-American Tragedy, 1813—1814, Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown, Chapter 11, "The Burning of Washington, August 1814", pp. 368—370.
- ^ James D. Dilts, The Great Road: the Building of the Baltimore & Ohio, the Nation's First Railroad, 1828-1853 (Stanford University Press 1993) p. 243
- ^ Dilts, p. 260
- ^ a b c d Dilts p. 243
- ^ Uhler, John Earle (December 1925). "The Delphian Club: A Contribution to the Literary History of Baltimore in the Early Nineteenth Century". Maryland Historical Magazine. 20 (4): 305–306.
- ^ Hubbell, Jay B. The South in American Literature: 1607–1900. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954: 484.
- ^ Hubbell, Jay B. The South in American Literature: 1607–1900. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954: 485.
- ^ a b c "The Sheridan Libraries & University Museums Blog – News, information and more from the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University". Retrieved April 27, 2023.
- ISBN 0-8154-1038-7
- ISBN 978-0-465-00853-7
- ^ Dilts pp. 209-210
- ^ Dilts pp. 214-215, 218. 231
- ^ Dilts pp. 241-245
- ^ Dilts p. 294
- ^ Dilts pp. 312, 318-334
- ^ The Magazine of American History, Vol. 29, 1893, pp. 282–283
- ^ ISBN 978-1572338517
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved April 16, 2021.
- ^ a b "Discourse on the life and character of George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore", John Pendleton Kennedy, page 43, University of Michigan Library (January 1, 1845), ASIN: B003B65WS0
- ^ a b "Discourse on the life and character of George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore", John Pendleton Kennedy, page 45, Google Books Version, citation for this version added for direct viewing of text, https://books.google.com/books?id=yO9lGu-ahCkC&dq=john+pendleton+kennedy%2C+religious+tolerance&pg=PA41
- ^ "The unedited full-text of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia: 1825", JewishEncyclopedia.com, Note: There are two different "Kennedys" mentioned in this source, 1) Thomas Kennedy, followed later by 2) John Pendleton Kennedy, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10455-maryland
- ISBN 1-164-43961-8
- ^ ISBN 978-0944190005
- ^ ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved August 7, 2023.
- ISBN 978-1572338517
- ^ ISBN 978-1572338517
- ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved August 7, 2023.
- ^ Cecilius Calvert, "Instructions to the Colonists by Lord Baltimore, (1633)" in Clayton Coleman Hall, ed., Narratives of Early Maryland, 1633-1684 (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910), 11-23.
- ^ "Reconstructing the Brick Chapel of 1667" Page 1, See section entitled "The Birthplace of Religious Freedom" "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on March 13, 2014. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ a b "The History of the United States Naval Academy Band", MU1 Doug O'Connor, United States Naval Academy, Naval Academy Band http://www.usna.edu/USNABand/history/
- ^ "American President, A Reference Resource: Millard Fillmore-- John P. Kennedy (1852–1853): Secretary of the Navy", Miller Center, University of Virginia, Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, "American President: John P. Kennedy (1852–1853)". Archived from the original on July 2, 2014. Retrieved May 8, 2014.
- ^ The Magazine of American History, Vol. 29, 1893, 282–283
- ^ Frank Friedel (1967), ed., Union Pamphlets of the Civil War, A John Harvard Library Book, Cambridge, MA: Harvard, p. [86].
- ISBN 0-19-503186-5
- ^ "John Pendleton Kennedy". Soylent Communications. 2014.
- ^ a b c d e "Autograph Leaves of our Country's Authors", John Pendleton Kennedy and Alexander Bliss, 1864, Smithsonian Institution, http://americanhistory.si.edu/documentsgallery/exhibitions/gettysburg_address_6.html
- ^ a b c d "Gettysburg Address On Display At The Smithsonian", Jeff Elliot, Abraham Lincoln Blog, November 28, 2008, Note: See "about notes" on author Jeff Elliot, who is an historian with 40 years of research experience, http://abrahamlincolnblog.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html
External links
- Works by John Pendleton Kennedy at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about John P. Kennedy at Internet Archive
- United States Congress. "John P. Kennedy (id: K000109)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
- Biography at the Naval Historical Center
- John P. Kennedy at Find a Grave
- Swallow Barn, vol. 1
- Swallow Barn, vol. 2
- Horse-Shoe Robinson
- West Virginia & Regional History Center at West Virginia University, John Pendleton Kennedy, Papers