John Bigelow Biography Quotes 3 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
John Bigelow was born in 1817 in the Hudson River valley of New York and came of age in a nation grappling with expansion, partisan realignment, and the moral crisis of slavery. He studied at Union College, where a classical education and exposure to public debate helped form a lifelong commitment to reform and letters. After reading law and admission to the bar, he moved to New York City, the country's publishing and political capital, where legal practice, journalism, and civic work often overlapped.

Law and Journalism
Training as a lawyer sharpened Bigelow's instinct for evidence and argument, and those habits followed him when he joined the New York Evening Post, then under the celebrated poet-editor William Cullen Bryant. In 1849 Bigelow became Bryant's partner and, along with Parke Godwin, helped steer the paper through an era marked by the Fugitive Slave Act, party schisms, and the rise of the Free Soil cause. At the Post he cultivated an informed, reformist voice: antislavery, fiscally prudent, and suspicious of machine politics. He also wrote as a traveler and social observer, notably on emancipation and labor in the Caribbean, bringing a lawyer's scrutiny and a reformer's sympathies to subjects often treated polemically.

Diplomacy and the Civil War
With the outbreak of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward sent Bigelow to Paris in 1861 as United States consul, a post that demanded political finesse more than ceremony. He worked closely with Charles Francis Adams in London to frustrate Confederate diplomacy in Europe and to block the transfer of warships and materiel that might tilt the naval balance. After the death of minister William L. Dayton, Bigelow became charge d'affaires and then minister to France, meeting regularly with Emperor Napoleon III and foreign minister Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys. He argued against French recognition of the Confederacy and pressed Washington's case regarding French intervention in Mexico, where the installation of Maximilian challenged the Monroe Doctrine. Bigelow's diaries from this period record careful, persistent diplomacy and the steady cultivation of relationships that helped keep France neutral as the Union closed out the war.

Scholarship and Literary Work
Paris also brought Bigelow a literary discovery that shaped his scholarly reputation. In the papers of friends of Benjamin Franklin, he located the long-missing manuscript of Franklin's autobiography. Bigelow's subsequent edition restored the narrative's integrity and introduced a reliable text to English-language readers. He returned to Franklin repeatedly in later years, editing and interpreting documents with an editor's discipline and a journalist's clarity. He also published studies of international affairs, including an account of France's entanglement with the Confederate cause, and in old age issued Retrospections of an Active Life, an expansive memoir that draws upon his correspondence with figures as varied as Bryant, Seward, Adams, and Samuel J. Tilden.

Public Service and Reform
Back in New York after his diplomatic service, Bigelow entered state office in the early 1870s as Secretary of State of New York, aligning himself with anti-corruption Democrats. His most sustained public work came through his friendship with Samuel J. Tilden, the reform governor and Democratic presidential candidate in 1876. Bigelow served as Tilden's confidant and later as an executor of his estate. When Tilden's will dedicated the bulk of his fortune to creating a free public library in New York City, and that bequest was contested, Bigelow's legal skill and patience helped secure a settlement and establish the Tilden Trust. He then guided the consolidation, in 1895, of the Astor and Lenox libraries with the Tilden Trust, forming the New York Public Library. As the library's first president he worked with the physician-administrator John Shaw Billings, the trustees, and civic leaders to define its mission. He championed Andrew Carnegie's gift for a system of branch libraries, insisting that dignified, well-located buildings and trained staff would place self-improvement within reach of ordinary New Yorkers.

Personal Life
In 1850 he married Jane Poultney, whose tact and hospitality were assets in both New York and Paris. Their family became part of Bigelow's public story. Their son John Bigelow, Jr. pursued a distinguished career in the United States Army and later taught at West Point, and their son Poultney Bigelow became a noted journalist and travel writer; both sons reflected the cosmopolitan education their parents valued. The household moved with ease among editors, reformers, and diplomats; visitors ranged from Bryant and Godwin in the newspaper years to American and European officials met during the Paris mission.

Later Years and Legacy
Bigelow remained active into his nineties, a familiar elder statesman of letters and civic life. He wrote, lectured, and advised younger reformers who were battling patronage and municipal graft. His papers, drawn from a lifetime of law practice, editorial work, and diplomacy, became a resource for historians of the Civil War and of New York's transformation into a modern metropolis. He died in 1911, widely regarded as one of the last links to the antebellum generation of reform-minded editors who believed that well-governed institutions and accessible knowledge could enlarge the possibilities of democratic life. The people who mattered most in his career, Bryant at the Post, Lincoln and Seward in Washington, Adams in London, Napoleon III across the negotiating table, and Tilden in New York, mark the arc of a life that bridged professions and continents. In each domain, John Bigelow brought the same tools: clarity of purpose, a lawyer's respect for evidence, and a citizen's conviction that public institutions can be made to serve the common good.

Our collection contains 3 quotes who is written by John, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - War.