EVERETT, EDWARD ( 1794-1865 ) . An Ameri can statesman, orator, and scholar. He was born at Dorchester, Mass., April 11, 1794; was at one time a pupil in a Boston school of which Daniel Webster, in the absence of his brother Ezekiel, was the teacher; graduated at Harvard in 1811; and in 1813 became the pastor of the Brattle Street Church (Unitarian) in Boston. As a preacher his career was brilliant though brief. He resigned his pastorate early in 1815, when not quite twenty-one years of age, to accept the Eliot professorship of Greek literature at Harvard. To fit himself more completely for this position he went to Europe, studied for two years in the University of GMtingen, where he re ceived the degree of Ph.D., and then traveled ex tensively in England and on the Continent. Upon his return in 1819, he entered upon the duties of his professorship, delivering at the outset a course of lectures on ancient Greece, which lie after wards repeated in Boston. From 1820 to 1824 he was also the editor of the North American Re view, to which he contributed a great number of articles. In 1824 he was elected to Congress from the Cambridge district, and was subsequently elected four successive times. During the whole ten years he was a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, and in the Twentieth Congress was its chairman. In 1836 he became Governor of Massachusetts, which office he held by annual reelection until 1840, having been defeated for an additional term, in the election of 1839, by a sin gle vote. From 1841 to 1845 he was Minister Pleni potentiary of the United States to Great Britain. Returning in 1846, he reluctantly accepted the presidency of Harvard University. which position. however, he resigned in 1849. Ile then estab lished himself in Boston with the purpose of en tering upon literary tasks long postponed. He
was summoned to fill the place of Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Fillmore, made vacant by Mr. Webster's death (1852). He held this position only four months, retiring at the close of President Fillmore's administration. Be fore leaving the Department of State he was elected to the United States Senate. Everett represented the conservative Whigs, and was looked upon as Webster's political executor, in sisting upon the inviolability of the Constitution and recognizing the presence and possible con tinuance of slavery. His health failing, he re signed his seat in the Senate in May. 1851, and retired to private life. In 1860 he was nominated for Vice-President of the United States by the Constitutional Union Party (q.v.). The ticket received 590,631 votes out of a total of 4,680,193, and 39 electoral votes, those of Kentucky, Vir ginia, and Tennessee. out of 303. When the Civil War broke out in 181;1 he took his stand promptly with those who were determined to maintain the Union at every hazard. In the great crisis of 1864, when Lincoln was reelected, Everett's name headed the list of ['residential electors of Massachusetts, and the casting of his vote for Lincoln was the last act in his political career. On January 9, 1805, he spoke in Faneuil Mali in behalf of the needy and suffering citizens of Savannah, and on the following Sunday, the 15th, he died. Ills orations and speeches have been published in four volumes (Boston, 1850 92), but there is no adequate biography. Con siderable biographical material, however, is con tained in A Memorial of L'duwerrl Everett from the City of Roston (Boston, 1865) ; and in Dana, An Address upon the Life and Services of Edward Everett (Cambridge, 1865).