judge of Henderson county, and in 1847 he was chosen to the legislature, where he was chairman of the committee on public lands. In 1849 he was a defeated candidate for the state senate, but in 1852 he was elected district judge. In the enforcement of the laws he was brought into personal collision with the gamblers and desperadoes that then held the frontier towns in awe, but his physical courage and moral force won him a triumph for law and order. Judge Reagan was first elected to congress in 1856 as a Democrat, after a severe contest. He remained in congress until 1861, when he returned home, and was elected to the state convention, in which he voted for secession. He was chosen by the convention to the provisional Confederate congress. On 6 March, 1861, he was appointed postmaster-general under the provisional government, and the next year he was reappointed to the same office under the permanent government. He was also acting secretary of the treasury for a short time near the close of the war. He was the only one of the cabinet that was captured with Jefferson Davis, and was confined for many months in Port Warren. He had conferences with President Johnson, William H. Seward, Henry Wilson, James Speed, and others on reconstruction, and wrote an open letter to the people of Texas, advocating laws for the protection of negroes, which should grant them civil rights and limited political rights with an educational qualification. His letter subjected him to misconstruction, and he was retired from politics for nine years. But he was elected to congress by 4,000 majority in 1874, in 1876 by 8,000, and after 1878 with little or no opposition. For nearly ten years he held continuously the post of chairman of the committee on commerce, with the exception of one term, and has been noted for his decided views and efforts to regulate inter-state commerce. He was one of the authors of the Cullom-Reagan interstate commerce bill, which became a law in 1887. In 1887 he took his seat in the U. S. senate, having been chosen for the term that ended in 1893.
REALF, Richard (relf), poet, b. in Framfield, Sussex. England. 14 June, 1834; d. in Oakland, Cal., 28 Oct., 1878. At the age of fifteen he began to write verses, and two years later he became amanuensis to a lady in Brighton. A travelling lecturer on phrenology recited some of the boy's poems, as illustrations of ideality, and thereupon several literary people in Brighton sought him out and encouraged him. Under their patronage a collection of his poems was published, entitled "Guesses at the Beautiful" (London, 1852). Realf spent a year in Leicestershire, studying scientific agriculture, and in 1854 came to the United States. He explored the slums of New York, became a Five-Points missionary, and assisted in establishing there a course of cheap lectures and a self- improvement association. In 1856 he accompanied a party of free-state emigrants to Kansas, where he became a journalist and correspondent of several eastern newspapers. He made the acquaintance of John Brown, accompanied him to Canada, and was to be secretary of state in the provisional government that Brown projected. The movement being deferred for two years, Realf made a visit to England and a tour in the southern states. When Brown made his attempt at Harper's Ferry in October, 1859, he was in Texas, where he was arrested and sent to Washington, being in imminent danger of lynching on the way. Early in 1862 he enlisted in the 88th Illinois regiment, with which he served through the war. Some of his
best lyrics were written in the field, and were widely circulated. After the war he was commissioned in a colored regiment, and in 1866 was mustered out with the rank of captain and brevet lieutenant-colonel. In 1868 he established a school for freed men in South Carolina, and a year later was made assessor of internal revenue for Edgefield district. He resigned this office in 1870, returned to the north, and became a journalist and lecturer, residing in Pittsburg. Pa. In 1873 he delivered a poem before the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, and in 1874 wrote one for the Society of the Army of the Potomac. He was a brilliant talker and a fine orator. Among his lectures were "Battle-Flashes" and "The Unwritten Story of the Martyr of Harper's Ferry." His most admired poems are " My Slain," "An Old Man's Idyl," "Indirection," and the verses that he wrote just before he took the poison that ended his life. He committed suicide in consequence of an unfortunate marriage and an imperfect divorce. Mr. Realf's "Guesses at the Beautiful, and other Poems" was edited with an introduction by Thomas D. Surplee (Buffalo, 1890); "Poems" (new ed., New York, 1899).
REAMY, Thaddeus Asbnry, physician, b. in Frederick county. Va., 28 April, 1829. He accompanied his parents in 1832 to Zanesville, Ohio, was graduated at Starling medical college in 1854, and followed his profession in Zanesville until 1870, when he removed to Cincinnati. During the civil war he served as surgeon in the 122d Ohio volunteers. In 1858 he was elected to the chair of materia medica and theraputics in Starling medical college, which he held for two years, and in 1867 he was chosen professor of the diseases of women and children, but he resigned in 1871 to accept the chair of obstetrics, clinical midwifery, and diseases of children in the Medical college of Ohio. Dr. Reamy has made a specialty of obstetrical practice, and holds the office of gynaecologist to the Good Samaritan hospital in Cincinnati. He has invented various modifications of instruments that are used in his specialty. Besides being a member of several gynaecological societies and other medical associations, he was, in 1870, president of the Ohio state medical society. Dr. Reamy has been a frequent contributor to medical journals. Among his papers are "Metastasis of Mumps to the Testicle treated by Cold" (1855); "Epidemic Diphtheria" (1859); "Puerperal Eclampsia" (1868); and " Laceration of the Perinæum " (1877).
REAVIS. Losran Uriah (rev-is), journalist, b. in Sangamon Bottom, Mason co., Ill., 26 March, 1831; d. in St. Louis. Mo., 25 April, 1889. After attending the village high-school, he taught from 1851 till 1855. In the latter year he entered the office of the Beardstown, Ill., "Gazette," in which soon afterward he purchased an interest, and continued its publication under the name of "The Central Illinoian" till the autumn of 1857, when he sold his share and removed to Nebraska. Returning to Beardstown he repurchased "The Illinoian" after the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for the presidency. In the spring of 1866 he disposed of that journal for the last time, and settling in St. Louis earnestly advocated the removal of the National capital to that city. His first effort in this direction was the publication of a pamphlet entitled "The New Republic, or the Transition Complete, with an Approaching Change of National Empire, based upon the Commercial and Industrial Expansion of the Great West" (St. Louis, 1867). This was followed by "A Change of National Empire, or Arguments for the Removal of the National Capital from Washington to the Mississippi Valley," with maps (1869). Besides issuing the fore-
