As a Congregationalist in Galesburg, Bickerdyke attended the church of Edward Beecher, brother ofCatharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the minister received a letter from Dr. Benjamin Woodward regarding the degraded state of soldiers' accommodations in Cairo, Illinois. The plea for medical help prompted Bickerdyke to leave her sons in the care of another family and travel to Cairo, bringing with her $100 worth of donated medical supplies and food.

In March 1875 Bruce took his seat in the Senate, becoming the nation's second black senator and the first black to be elected to a full term. In the Senate he served on four committees, including the important select committees on Mississippi River improvements and on the Freedmen's Bank. As chairman of the latter committee, he led the effort to reform the management of the institution and provide relief for depositors. But a Bruce-sponsored Senate bill to obtain congressional reimbursement for black victims of the bank's failure did not pass.

BRUCE, Blanche Kelso, a Senator from Mississippi; born in slavery near Farmville, Prince Edward County, Va., March 1, 1841; was tutored by his master’s son; left his master at the beginning of the Civil War; taught school in Hannibal, Mo.; after the war became a planter in Mississippi; member of the Mississippi Levee Board; sheriff and tax collector of Bolivar County 1872-1875; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1875, to March 3, 1881; was the first African American to serve a full term in the United States Senate; appointed Regis

[Samuel Morse] returned in 1832 with high hopes for The Gallery of the Louvre, which he displayed in New York. But it, like The House of Representatives, failed to attract public interest. A final disappointment came when he learned that he had not been chosen to paint one of the four panels in the ceiling of the rotunda in the Capitol in Washington, a commission he had long coveted. This rebuff was undoubtedly at least in part a reaction to his strongly expressed political views, which were anti-Catholic and antiabolitionist.

HOAR, Ebenezer Rockwood, (grandson of Roger Sherman, son of Samuel Hoar, brother of George Frisbie Hoar, father of Sherman Hoar, and uncle of Rockwood Hoar), a Representative from Massachusetts; born in Concord, Mass., February 21, 1816; pursued classical studies and was graduated from Harvard University in 1835; was admitted to the bar in 1840 and commenced practice in Concord and Boston, Mass.; served in the State senate in 1846 as an anti-slavery Whig; judge of the court of common pleas 1849-1855; judge of the State supreme court 1859-1869; Attorney General of the Unit