1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hawley, Joseph Roswell

HAWLEY, JOSEPH ROSWELL (1826–1905), American political leader, was born on the 31st of October at Stewartsville, Richmond county, North Carolina, where his father, a native of Connecticut, was pastor of a Baptist church. The father returned to Connecticut in 1837 and the son graduated at Hamilton College (Clinton, N.Y.) in 1847. He was admitted to the bar in 1850, and practised at Hartford, Conn., for six years. An ardent opponent of slavery, he became a Free Soiler, was a delegate to the National Convention which nominated John P. Hale for the presidency in 1852, and subsequently served as chairman of the State Committee, having at the same time editorial control of the Charter Oak, the party organ. In 1856 he took a leading part in organizing the Republican party in Connecticut, and in 1857 became editor of the Hartford Evening Press, a newly established Republican newspaper. He served in the Federal army throughout the Civil War, rising from the rank of captain (April 22, 1861) to that of brigadier-general of volunteers (Sept. 1864); took part in the Port Royal Expedition, in the capture of Fort Pulaski (April 1862), in the siege of Charleston and the capture of Fort Wagner (Sept. 1863), in the battle of Olustee (Feb. 20, 1864), in the siege operations about Petersburg, and in General W. T. Sherman’s campaign in the Carolinas; and in September 1865 received the brevet of major-general of volunteers. From April 1866 to April 1867 he was governor of Connecticut, and in 1867 he bought the Hartford Courant, with which he combined the Press, and which became under his editorship the most influential newspaper in Connecticut and one of the leading Republican papers in the country. He was the permanent chairman of the Republican National Convention in 1868, was a delegate to the conventions of 1872, 1876 and 1880, was a member of Congress from December 1872 until March 1875 and again in 1879–1881, and was a United States senator from 1881 until the 3rd of March 1905, being one of the Republican leaders both in the House and the Senate. From 1873 to 1876 he was president of the United States Centennial Commission, the great success of the Centennial Exhibition being largely due to him. He died at Washington, D.C., on the 17th of March 1905.