Page:Men of Mark in America vol 2.djvu/59

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JOSEPH ROSWELL HAWLEY
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gresses as its chairman. He was chairman of the committee on Civil Service and Retrenchment, 1883-87, when he vigorously promoted the enactment of Civil Service reform legislation. As chairman of the select committee on Ordnance and Warships in the forty-ninth Congress he submitted a valuable report, the result of careful investigations into steel production and heavy gun making in England and the United States, undertaken during his chairmanship of the select committee on the capacity of steel producing works in the forty-eighth Congress. He was also a member of the committee on Coast Defense, Railroads, Interoceanic Canals and International Expositions. He was president of the United States Centennial commission, 1872-77, and was a chief promoter of the Centennial exposition at Philadelphia in 1876, giving two years to this work. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. from Hamilton in 1875, from Yale in 1886 and from Trinity in 1894. He was a trustee of Hamilton, 1876. Connecticut honored him by making him the candidate of the state delegation for the nomination for president of the United States in 1884, and at each successive ballot before the National convention gave him the unanimous vote of the delegation. He was elected to membership in the American Historical and other learned societies. He was married December 25, 1855, to Harriet Ward Foote, of Guilford, who died March 3, 1886. By the soldiers who served in the army with which her husband was connected, her name is cherished for her services in camp and field during the Civil war. He was married a second time, in 1887, to Edith Anne Hornor, of England, and had two children (daughters) born of this union. He is the author of "The Battle of Olustee" (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. iv, pages 79-80). General Hawley in his long and active life devoted unselfishly to his country, has proved what it means to be a patriotic soldier, a wise legislator, a clean and helpful journalist, an ardent champion of the political faith which he espoused, a firm believer in human rights, in the American people, and in the American way of meeting and deciding questions of vital import.

General Hawley died at his home in Washington, District of Columbia, March 18, 1905.