OBITUARIES, AMERICAN. (EVARTS FEE.) 



organize the mission work in that country, and, 

 continuing the journey round the world, visited 

 many mission fields. He recounted the story of 

 his travels in his book Uber Liinder und Meere. 

 In 1892 he again visited Japan, and organized the 

 Japan Annual Conference. At the General Con- 

 ference in 1895 he was appointed to write a sys- 

 tematic theology for official use in the Church, 

 and he completed the manuscript only a few 

 weeks before his death. About twenty years pre- 

 viously he prepared the catechism, which is the 

 manual of doctrine in present use. 



Evarts, William Maxwell, lawyer and states- 

 man, born in Boston, Mass., Feb. 6, 1818; died 

 in New York city, Feb. 28, 1901. He received his 

 early education in the Boston Latin School, and 

 was graduated at Yale College in 1837. He con- 

 tinued his studies at Harvard Law School, and 

 was admitted to the 

 bar in New York in 

 1841. He immedi- 

 ately began practise 

 in New York city, 

 and soon established 

 a reputation for 

 learning and acu- 

 men, and was often 

 consulted by older 

 lawyers. In 1849 he 

 was appointed as- 

 sistant district at- 

 torney, serving till 

 1853; while holding 

 this office in 1851 he 

 successfully conduct- 

 ed the prosecution of the Cuban filibusters con- 

 cerned in the Cleopatra expedition. The same year 

 he was selected to argue in favor of the constitu- 

 tionality of the metropolitan police act. He was re- 

 tained as counsel by the State of New York in 1857 

 and 1860 to argue the Lemmon slave case before 

 the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. He iden- 

 tified himself with the Republican party, and in 

 1860 was chairman of the New York delegation 

 to the National Convention in Chicago, where he 

 delivered an address in placing the name of Wil- 

 liam H. Seward before the convention. In 1861 

 he was a candidate before the New York Legis- 

 lature for the United States senatorship, but his 

 name was withdrawn to enable his supporters to 

 secure the election of Ira Harris. He then retired 

 for several years from political life. In 1862 he 

 conducted the case of the Government to establish 

 in the Supreme Court the right of the United 

 States in the civil war to treat captured vessels 

 as maritime prizes. In 1865-'66 he maintained 

 with success before the courts the unconstitution- 

 ally of State laws taxing United States bonds or 

 national bank stock without the authorization of 

 Congress. In 1868 he made a famous three-day 

 argument before the United States Senate sitting 

 as a court of impeachment, which resulted direct- 

 ly in the acquittal of President Johnson; from 

 July 15, 1868, till the end of Johnson's adminis- 

 tration, he was Attorney-General of the United 

 States. In 1872 he was counsel for the United 

 States before the Geneva Board of Arbitration, 

 and his argument was potent in effecting a peace- 

 ful and honorable adjustment of the claims of 

 direct damage against Great Britain for the devas- 

 tations of the Alabama. In 1875 he was senior 

 counsel for Henry Ward Beecher in the trial of 

 the suit against him in Brooklyn. In 1877 he was 

 the advocate of the Republican party before the 

 electoral commission, and he became Secretary of 

 State in the Cabinet of President Hayes. He was 

 sent to Paris in 1881 as a delegate to the Inter- 



national Monetary Conference. He was elected 

 United States Senator from New York and served 

 from March 4, 1885, till March 3, 1891. Soon 

 after his seventy-fifth birthday he began to with- 

 draw from public life, mainly on account of the 

 failure of his eyesight. Mr. Evarts was known 

 as a brilliant speaker at convivial gatherings and 

 as an eloquent public orator; as an advocate he 

 was without a superior in his time. On many 

 important occasions he delivered addresses, sev- 

 eral of which have been published, among them 

 a eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase, delivered at 

 Dartmouth College in June, 1873; the Centennial 

 oration, in Philadelphia, in 1876; and speeches at 

 the unveiling of the statues of William H. Sew- 

 ard and Daniel Webster, in New York, and of 

 Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty. He received the 

 degree of LL. D. from Union College in 1857, 

 from Yale in 1865, and from Harvard in 1869. 



Fee, John G., clergyman, born in Bracken 

 County, Kentucky, Sept. 9, 1816; died in Berea, 

 Ky., Jan. 11, 1901. He was the first son of a 

 thrifty farmer, John Fee, who had inherited one 

 slave and bought others. At the age of sixteen 

 young Fee united with the Presbyterian Church, 

 and two years later entered Augusta College, 

 where he was finally graduated, although in the 

 meantime he had studied at Miami University, 

 Oxford, Ohio. He entered Lane Seminary, Cin- 

 cinnati, in 1842, and there he -became an ardent 

 abolitionist. On returning home in 1844, he in- 

 curred the lasting anger of his father, who dis- 

 inherited him when it was discovered that young 

 Fee had sold all his possessions, and with the 

 proceeds bought one of his father's slaves and 

 set her free. The young preacher then married 

 Matilda Hamilton, removed to Lewis County, 

 and there began evangelistic work. The Synod 

 of Kentucky, meeting at Paris, Ky., in 1845, 

 censured him for not giving fellowship in his 

 church to slaveholders, and requested the Amer- 

 ican Mission Society to give him no more aid as 

 an evangelist. But Fee persisted in his work, 

 gathering his little antislavery congregations in 

 Lewis and Bracken Counties, suffering all sorts 

 of indignities, and often meeting with mob vio- 

 lence. His life was constantly threatened. Once, 

 while sitting in the door of his house, he was 

 fired on. Once an assistant was flogged before 

 his eyes, and he was threatened. While he was 

 preaching at College Hill, a mob of 60 men sur- 

 rounded the house with pistols and guns. Fee 

 was dragged out, and a man with a rope swore 

 that he would be swung up if he did not leave 

 the county. He declined to do so, and went on 

 preaching, unarmed and unafraid. In 1848 the 

 American Missionary Association came to his aid 

 with an allowance of $200 a year, and his tracts 

 against slaveholding were widely circulated in 

 Kentucky and other States. His little book, 

 Antislavery Manual, attracted the notice of Cas- 

 sius M. Clay, who not long before had bought a 

 large tract of land in the Kentucky mountains 

 with the intention of keeping it forever free from 

 slavery. In 1853 Gen. Clay asked Dr. Fee to 

 accept a small farm oh this tract, settle upon 

 it, and become pastor of the district. The farm 

 was but a clearing in the wilderness, but there 

 Dr. Fee, with the help of faithful assistants, 

 founded and built Berea College, open to all with- 

 out regard to sex or color, which now has more 

 than 600 students. Dr. Fee remained at its head 

 till about 1869. Mobs repeatedly threatened to 

 extinguish it, and twice the members of the little 

 colony were driven from their homes; but they 

 went back again and stayed, and the work of 

 their hands prospered. Dr. Fee and his friends 



