YATES, Richard,  (father of Richard Yates [1860-1936]), a Representative and a Senator from Illinois; born in Warsaw, Gallatin County, Ky., January 18, 1815; attended the common schools; moved to Illinois in 1831; graduated from Illinois College, Jacksonville, Ill, in 1835; studied law at Transylvania University, Lexington, Ky.; admitted to the bar in 1837 and commenced practice in Jacksonville, Ill.; member, State house of representatives 1842-1845, 1848-1849; elected as a Whig to the Thirty-second and Thirty-third Congresses (March 4, 1851-March 3, 1855); unsuccess

The issue that above all others put Black in the center of sectional controversy was the Buchanan administration's response to South Carolina's secession in December 1860. The question split the cabinet into northern and southern factions. Although Black initially believed in the right of a state to secede, he backed away from urging endorsement of that position in response to the president's request for a legal opinion on secession. The attorney general responded that the federal government had a duty and right to collect duties and to defend public property and execute the laws.

GORMAN, Willis Arnold, a Representative from Indiana; born near Flemingsburg, Ky., January 12, 1816; pursued an academic course; moved to Bloomington, Ind., in 1835; was graduated from the law department of the Indiana University at Bloomington in 1845; was admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Bloomington; clerk of the State senate in 1837 and 1838; member of Indiana house of representatives, 1841-1844; major and colonel of Indiana Volunteers in the Mexican War; elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-first and Thirty-second Congresses (March 4, 1849-Ma

Holt's unionism, however, grew considerably more ardent in the wake of Abraham Lincoln's presidential victory. As secession became reality, Holt became, along with Jeremiah Black and Edwin Stanton, one of the stalwart Union men in the lame-duck administration, pressing Buchanan to be resolute, even as other cabinet members equivocated or cast their lot with the South. In December 1860 Secretary of War John Floyd decamped, and Holt was appointed in his stead.

In the nineteenth century, this tall, dark-skinned, charismatic, illiterate wisewoman who dressed like a Quaker was best known as a Methodist-style itinerant preacher and religiously inspired supporter of women's rights and the abolition of slavery. A familiar figure in reform circles, she also advocated temperance and associated with spiritualists and water-cure enthusiasts. In her own day she presented herself as the quintessential slave woman.

*Crook, James L.---Born October 26, 1836, Baltimore, Md.; A. B., 1860; lawyer; studied law in Baltimore; in commissary department, United States army; Sigma Chi; U. P. society.  Died May 12, 1878, Elk Ridge Landing, Md.