Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 1).djvu/529

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CALDWELL
CALDWELL
497

Mr. Caldwell also directed his attention to the study and practice of medicine, and was an inti- mate friend of Dr. Rush, with whom he had be- come acquainted at college. Mr. Caldwell was an earnest patriot in the revolutionary war. His house was plundered by the British, his library burned, and everything but the buildings on his plantation destroyed. Cornwallis offered $1,000 to any one who should bring him into camp ; but all efforts to take him were unsuccessful. He was a member, in 1776, of the State constitutional con- vention, and, although clergymen were prohibited by law from entering the legislature, he had much influence in public affairs, and earnestly opposed the federal constitution in the convention called for its ratification. In 1791, when the University of North Carolina was founded, he was offered the presidency, but declined on account of his advanced age. The trustees gave him the degree of D. D. in 1810. A biography of Dr. Caldwell, by E. W. Ca- ruthers. D. D., was published in 1842.


CALDWELL, George Chapman, chemist, b. in Framingham, Mass., 14 Aug., 1834. He was graduated at Lawrence scientific school of Har- vard in 1855, and pui'sued higher studies abroad, receiving the degree of Ph. D. from Gottingen in 1856. On his return to the United States, he was appointed professor of chemistry and physics in Antioch college, and filled that chair from 1859 till 1862, then became hospital visitor of the U. S. sanitary commission in charge of the distribution of supplies to the hospitals in and around Wash- ington until 1864. Dr. Caldwell then occupied the chair of chemistry m Pennsylvania agricul- tural college from 1864 till 1867, and was vice- president of the college in 1867-'8. Since 1868 he has been professor of agricultural and ana- lytical chemistry at Cornell, and has become an authority on chemistry as applied to agriculture and similar subjects. He is the author of numer- ous reports and many papers that have been con- tributed to state reports and scientific journals, and has published " Agricultural Qualitative and Quantitative Chemical Analysis " (New York, 1869) ; with A. A. Breneman, " A Manual of Intro- ductory Chemical Practice " (1875), and with S. M. Babcock. "A Manual of Qualitative Chemical Analvsis " (Ithaca. 1882).


CALDWELL, Henry Clay, jurist, b. in Mar- shall CO., W. Va., 4 Sept., 1835. He was educated in the common schools of Iowa, where his father had moved in 1837, studied law in Keosauque, Iowa, and was admitted to the bar in 1852. He was prosecuting attorney of Van Buren co., Iowa, from 1856 till 1858, and a member of the legisla- ture from 1859 till 1861. He enlisted in the 3d Iowa volunteer cavalry in the latter year, and be- came successively major, lieutenant-colonel, and colonel of his regiment. He was in active military service from 1861 till 4 June, 1864, when he re- signed his commission, having been appointed U. S. judge for the eastern district of Arkansas,


CALDWELL, James, clergyman, b. in Char- lotte CO., Va., in April, 1734; d.in Elizabethtown, N. J., 24 Nov., 1781. He was graduated at the college of New Jersey, Princeton, in 1759, and three years later became pastor of the church in Elizabethtown. During the political agitations preceding the revolution he took an active part in arousing the spirit of rebellion, thereby incurring bitter hatred on the part of his tory neighbors. As chaplain in the New Jersey brigade, after the be- ginning of hostilities, he soon earned the nickname of the " soldier parson," and suffered for his patri- otic zeal by having his church and house burned in 1780 by a party of British marauders and tories. His family sought refuge in the village of Con- necticut Farms (now Union), N. J., but before the close of the year a reconnoitring force from the British camps on Staten Island pillaged the place, and Mrs. Caldwell was killed by a stray bullet while in a room praying with her two children. Her husband was at the time on duty with the army at Morristown. Shortly after this (23 June, 1780) he distinguished himself in the successful defence of Springfield, N. J., which was attacked by a heavy force of the British. During the en- gagement he supplied the men with hymn-books from a neighboring church to use as wadding, with the exhortation, " Now put Watts into them, boys ! " He was shot by an American sentry dur- ing an altercation concerning a package, which the sentry thought it his duty to examine. The soldier was delivered to the civil authorities, tried for murder, and hanged, 29 Jan., 1782. Such was the popular indignation at the time that it was commonly believed that the sentry had been bribed by the British to kill the chaplain. A handsome monument commemorating the life and services of Mr. Caldwell and his wife was erected at Elizabeth- town in 1846. on the sixty-fourth anniversary of his untimely death. — His son, John E., was taken to France by Lafayette, and there educated. He became a prominent philanthropist, edited the " Christian Herald," and was one of the founders of the Bible societv.


CALDWELL, John, soldier, b. in Prince Ed- ward CO., Va.. ; d. in Frankfort, Ky., 9 Nov., 1804. He removed to Kentucky in 1781, served in the conflicts with the Indians, and became a major- general of militia. He was a member of the Ken- tucky state conventions of 1787 and 1788, and of the state senate in 1792 and 1793. At the time of his death he was lieutenant-governor.


CALDWELL, John Curtis, soldier, b. in Low- ell, Vt., 17 April, 1833. He was graduated at Amherst in 1855, At the beginning of the civil war he became colonel of the 11th Maine volun- teers. He was made brigadier-general of volun- teers 28 April, 1862, and brevetted major-general 19 Aug., 1865. Gen. Caldwell was in every action of the Army of the Potomac, from its organization till Gen. Grant took command, and during the last year of the war he was president of an advisory board of the war department. He was a member of the Maine senate, adjutant-general of the state in 1867, and in 1869 was U. S. consul at Valpa- raiso, Chili. From 1873 till 1882 he was minister to Uraguay and Paraguay, and in 1885, having removed to Kansas, was president of the board of pardons of that state.


CALDWELL, Joseph, educator, b. in Lammington, N. J., 21 April, 1773 ; d. in Chapel Hill, N. C, 24 Jan., 1835. He was graduated at Princeton in 1791, delivering the Latin salutatory, and then taught school in Lammington and Elizabethtown, where he began the study of divinity. He became tutor at Princeton in April, 1795, and in 1796 was appointed professor of mathematics in the University of North Carolina. He found the institution, then only five years old, in a feeble state, nearly destitute of buildings, library, and apparatus, and to him is ascribed the merit of having saved it from ruin. He was made its president in 1804, and held the office till his death, with the exception of the years from 1812 till 1817. Princeton gave him the degree of D. D. in 1816. In 1824 he visited Europe to purchase apparatus and select books for the library of the university. A monument to his memory has been erected in the grove