PALFREY, JOHN GORHAM, D.D.,LL.D; b. Boston. 1796; graduated at Harvard in 1815, and studied for the ministry. In 1818 he was called to the pulpit of the Brattle square church (Congregational-Unitarian), Boston, and in 1831, to the chair of sacred literature at the Harvard divinity school, where he remained till 1839. He was editor of the North American Review, 1839-42, and in the latter year gave a course of lectures before the Lowell institute, Boston, on The Evidences of Christianity, which appeared in book form the next year. He was elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1842, and secretary of the commonwealth in 1844. He entered congress as a whig in 1846. He had already opposed the extension of slavery in a series of articles called The Progress of the Power; and in Dec., 1847, he declined to vote for Robert C. Winthrop, the whig candidate for speaker. This step, with his well-known anti-slavery principles, cost him his seat at the election of 1848, after a close contest. He soon joined.the free-soil party, was one of
the editors of the Commonwealth, the Massachusetts organ of that party, and their candi date for governor. He acted with the republican party after its formation; but he did not again hold office, except from 1861-66, when he was postmaster of Boston. He has published Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities, 1838-52; Harmony of the Gos pels, 1831; Sermons, 1834; Academical Lectures; Remarks on the Proposed Constitutional Amendments; and The Relation Between Judaism and the History of New England, 4 vols., 1858-78. The latter work is perhaps the best history ever written by an American, so far as original investigation of sources and impartiality are concerned; but is not bril liant in style. An abridgment of this history appeared in 1S66,with the title A History of New England Yrom the Discovery by Europeans to the Revolution of the 'Seventeenth Century, 4 vols. He died April, 1881.