Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/365

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MILLER
MILLER

cause, and, although lie took no pait in politics, the course of public alfairs induced him to remove in 1850 from Kentucky to Iowa, where he became s. leader of the Republican party. He was offered and declined numerous offices, and devoted himself to his profession, in which he took high rank. In 1863 he was appointed by President Lincoln asso- ciate justice of the U. S. supreme court, which office he continued to hold. He was the orator at the con- stitutional centennial celebration at Philadelphia.


MILLER, Stephen, soldier, b. in Perry countv, Pa., 7 Jan., 181G ; d. in Worthington, Minn., 18 Aug., 1881. His grandfather, Melchior Miller, came from Germany about 1785. Stephen received a, common-school education, became a forwarding and commission merchant in Harrisburg in 1837, was elected prothonotary of Dauphin county in 1849 and 1853, and in 1853-5 edited the '• tele- graph," a Whig journal at Harrisburg. In 1855-'8 he was flour-inspector of Philadelphia, and in the latter year he removed to Minnesota for his health, and engaged in business in St. Cloud. He was a delegate to the Republican national convention of 1860, and a presidential elector on the Lincoln ticket in that year. He enlisted as a private sol- dier in 1861, was made lieutenant-colonel of the 1st Minnesota infantry, and served with the Army of the Potomac till September, 1863, when he became colonel of the 7th Minnesota, and assisted, with his regiment, in quelling the Indian outbreak of that year in his adopted state. He was commis- sioned brigadier-general of volunteers, 36 Oct., 1863, and shortly afterward elected governor of Minnesota, so that he resigned from the army on 18 Jan., 1864. He served as governor in 1864-'5, and from 1871 till his death was field-agent of the St. Paul and Sioux City railroad.


MILLER, Stephen Decatur, senator, b. in Waxhaw settlement, Lancaster district, S. C, in May, 1787; d. in Raymond, Miss., 8 March, 1838. He was graduated at the College of South Carolina in 180S, admitted to the bar in Columbia in 1811, and elected to congress in 1816 as an anti-Calhoun Democrat, serving in 1817-'19, and declining a re- election. He was state senator in 1833-'8, and in 1888-'30 governor of South Carolina. While oc- cupying the former office, he was chairman of the judiciary committee, and originated important changes, especially in the criminal law of the state. As governor he threw all his influence on the side of nullification. He was a member of the state convention in 1830, again in 1833, and in 1830-'3 was in the U. S. senate, but resigned at the latter date on account of the failure of his health. He removed to Mississippi in 1835, settled on a planta- tion, and engaged in cotton-planting till his death.


MILLER, Stephen Franks, lawyer, b. in North Carolina about 1810; d. in Oglethorpe, G-a., in 1867. He removed to Georgia in his early youth, was ad- mitted to the bar when twenty-one years of age, .and was soon afterward elected solicitor-general of the southern district. On the expiration of his term of office he removed to Alabama, where he practised his profession until a bronchial affection compelled him to engage in other pursuits. From 1840 till 1847 he edited •' The Monitor," a Whig journal published in Tuscaloosa, Ala. In 1848-"y he resided in New Orleans, where he was associated in the editorial management of " De Bow's Re- view " and the " Daily Commercial Times." His health again failing, he removed to Oglethorpe. Ga., where he resided until his death. He published " Bench and Bar of Georgia " (3 vols., Philadelphia, 1858) ; " Wilkins Wilder, or the Successful Man " (1860) ; and " Memoir of Gen. David Blackshear."


MILLER, Theodore, jurist, b. in Hudson, N. Y., in IMay. 1816 ; d. there, 18 Aug., 1895. He was edu- cated in the public schools, admitted to the bar, was district attorney for Columbia county, and con- ducted successfully the prosecutions against the leaders of the anti-rent faction, his energy in main- taining the law resulting in the suppression of that movement. He was elected a judge of the supreme court of New York state in 1861, and during the last four years of his service was presiding justice of the 3d department. He was made associate jus- tice of the court of appeals in 1874 and held office till 1886, when he was retired on account of age.


MILLER, Warner, senator, b. in Oswego county, N. Y., 13 Aug., 1838. His parents were of German extraction, and his grandfather served as a colonel in the Revolutionary army. Warner was graduated at Union in 1860. He enlisted a few months later as a private in a New York cavalry regiment, served under Gen. Philip H. Sheridan in the Shenandoah valley, and was promoted lieutenant. At the battle of Winchester he was taken prisoner, and paroled on the field. Soon afterward he was honorably dis- charged and went abroad, where he became inter- ested in paper-manufacturing, and on his return he established himself in this business in Herkimer, N. Y., where he still (1888) resides. His first active participation in politics was in 1873, when he was a delegate to the National Republican convention at Philadelphia. He was in the Legislature in 1874-"8. was elected to congress as a Republican in 1878, and re-elected in 1880, bat in 1881 was chosen U. S. senator from New York to fill the unexpired term of Thomas C. Piatt, who had resigned. His term expired in 1887, when he was succeeded by Frank Hiscock.


MILLER, William, founder of the sect of Adventists. or " Millerites," b. in Pittsfield, Mass., 5 Feb., 1783 ; d. in Low Hampton, N. Y., 30 Dec, 1849. His father, Capt. William Mil- ler, was a soldier of the Revolution and of the war of 1813. His mother was the daughterof Elnathan Phelps, of Pittsfield, Mass., a popular Bap- tist clergyman. Re- ligious meetings were often held in his fa- ther's house, and the zeal of the exhorters and revivalists had. much to do with shap- ing the boy's career, who had little else to

break the monotony

of his farm life, the few books he could borrow were mainly religious, stimulating the morbid tendency of his mind ; but he earned copies of " Robinson Crusoe " and " The Adventures of Robert Boyle " by chopping wood. He became a prosperous Green mountain farmer, was a recruiting-officer at the beginning of the war of 1813, and a captain at Plattsburg. He was a ready and smooth versifier, and was called the "poet of Low Hampton." In his early manhood he read Hume. Voltaire, and Thomas Paine, and advocated their teachings. He afterward professed faith in Christianity, uniting with the Baptist church at Low Hampton, when his absorbing study of the Bible began. " I lost all taste for other reading," he wrote of this period. He began with Genesis, and left not a sentence unstudied, accept-