became a civil engineer and constructor of railways, and was engaged under the war department in survey work. In 1842 he was appointed a second lieutenant in the corps of the topographical engineers. In the war with Mexico he was on the staffs successively of Generals Taylor, J. Worth and Robert Patterson, and was brevetted for gallant conduct at Monterey. Until the Civil War he was engaged in various engineering works, mainly in connexion with lighthouses, and later as a captain of topographical engineers in the survey of the northern lakes. In 1861 he was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers, and had command of the 2nd brigade of the Pennsylvania Reserves in the Army of the Potomac under General M’Call. He served in the Seven Days, receiving a severe wound at the action of Frazier’s Farm. He was absent from his command until the second battle of Bull Run, after which he obtained the command of his division. He distinguished himself greatly at the battles of South Mountain and Antietam. At Fredericksburg he and his division won great distinction by their attack on the position held by Jackson’s corps, and Meade was promoted major-general of volunteers, to date from the 29th of November. Soon afterwards he was placed in command of the V. corps. At Chancellorsville he displayed great intrepidity and energy, and on the eve of the battle of Gettysburg was appointed to succeed Hooker. The choice was unexpected, but Meade justified it by his conduct of the operations, and in the famous three days’ battle he inflicted a complete defeat on General Lee’s army. His reward was the commission of brigadier-general in the regular army. In the autumn of 1863 a war of manœuvre was fought between the two commanders, on the whole favourably to the Union arms. Grant, commanding all the armies of the United States, joined the Army of the Potomac in the spring of 1864, and remained with it until the end of the war; but he continued Meade in his command, and successfully urged his appointment as major-general in the regular army (Aug. 18, 1864), eulogizing him as the commander who had successfully met and defeated the best general and the strongest army on the Confederate side. After the war Meade commanded successively the military division of the Atlantic, the department of the east, the third military district (Georgia and Alabama) and the department of the south. He died at Philadelphia on the 6th of November, 1872. The degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by Harvard University, and his scientific attainments were recognized by the American Philosophical Society and the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. There are statues of General Meade in Philadelphia and at Gettysburg.
See I. R. Pennypacker, General Meade (“Great Commanders” series, New York, 1901).
MEADE, WILLIAM (1789–1862), American Protestant
Episcopal bishop, the son of Richard Kidder Meade (1746–1805),
one of General Washington’s aides during the War of Independence,
was born on the 11th of November 1789, near Millwood,
in that part of Frederick county which is now Clarke county,
Virginia. He graduated as valedictorian in 1808 at the college
of New Jersey (Princeton); studied theology under the Rev.
Walter Addison of Maryland, and in Princeton; was ordained
deacon in 1811 and priest in 1814; and preached both in the
Stone Chapel, Millwood, and in Christ Church, Alexandria, for
some time. He became assistant bishop of Virginia in 1829;
was pastor of Christ Church, Norfolk, in 1834–1836; in 1841
became bishop of Virginia; and in 1842–1862 was president of
the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia, near
Alexandria, delivering an annual course of lectures on pastoral
theology. In 1819 he had acted as the agent of the American
Colonization Society to purchase slaves, illegally brought into
Georgia, which had become the property of that state and were
sold publicly at Milledgeville. He had been prominent in the
work of the Education Society, which was organized in 1818 to
advance funds to needy students for the ministry of the American
Episcopal Church, and in the establishment of the Theological
Seminary near Alexandria, as he was afterwards in the work of
the American Tract Society, and the Bible Society. He was a
founder and president of the Evangelical Knowledge Society
(1847), which, opposing what it considered the heterodoxy of
many of the books published by the Sunday School Union,
attempted to displace them by issuing works of a more evangelical
type. A low Churchman, he strongly opposed Tractarianism.
He was active in the case against Bishop Henry Ustick Onderdonk
(1789–1858) of Pennsylvania, who because of intemperance
was forced to resign and was suspended from the ministry in 1844;
in that against Bishop Benjamin Tredwell Onderdonk (1791–1861)
of New York, who in 1845 was suspended from the ministry on
the charge of intoxication and improper conduct; and in that
against Bishop G. W. Doane of New Jersey. He fought against
the threatening secession of Virginia, but acquiesced in the
decision of the state and became presiding bishop of the Southern
Church. He died in Richmond, Virginia, on the 14th of March
1862.
Among his publications, besides many sermons, were A Brief Review of the Episcopal Church in Virginia (1845); Wilberforce, Cranmer, Jewett and the Prayer Book on the Incarnation (1850); Reasons for Loving the Episcopal Church (1852); and Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia (1857); a storehouse of material on the ecclesiastical history of the state.
See the Life by John Johns (Baltimore, 1867).
MEADVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Crawford county,
Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on French Creek, 36 m. S. of Erie. Pop.
(1900), 10,291, of whom 912 were foreign-born and 173 were
negroes; (1910 census) 12,780. It is served by the Erie, and
the Bessemer & Lake Erie railways. Meadville has three
public parks, two general hospitals and a public library, and is
the seat of the Pennsylvania College of Music, of a commercial
college, of the Meadville Theological School (1844, Unitarian),
and of Allegheny College (co-educational), which was opened in
1815, came under the general patronage of the Methodist
Episcopal Church in 1833, and in 1909 had 322 students (200 men
and 122 women). Meadville is the commercial centre of a good
agricultural region, which also abounds in oil and natural gas.
The Erie Railroad has extensive shops here, which in 1905
employed 46.7% of the total number of wage-earners, and there
are various manufactures. The factory product in 1905 was
valued at $2,074,600, being 24.4% more than that of 1900.
Meadville, the oldest settlement in N.W. Pennsylvania, was
founded as a fortified post by David Mead in 1793, laid out as a
town in 1795, incorporated as a borough in 1823 and chartered
as a city in 1866.
MEAGHER, THOMAS FRANCIS (1823–1867), Irish nationalist and American soldier, was born in Waterford, Ireland, on the 3rd of August 1823. He graduated at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, in 1843, and in 1844 began the study of law at Dublin. He became a member of the Young Ireland Party in 1845, and in 1847 was one of the founders of the Irish Confederation. In March 1848 he made a speech before the Confederation which led to his arrest for sedition, but at his trial the jury failed to agree and he was discharged. In the following July the Confederation created a “war directory” of five, of which Meagher was a member, and he and William Smith O’Brien travelled through Ireland for the purpose of starting a revolution. The attempt proved abortive; Meagher was arrested in August, and in October was tried for high treason before a special commission at Clonmel. He was found guilty and was condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in Van Diemen’s Land, whither he was transported in the summer of 1849. Early in 1852 he escaped, and in May reached New York City. He made a tour of the cities of the United States as a popular lecturer, and then studied law and was admitted to the New York bar in 1855. He made two unsuccessful ventures in journalism, and in 1857 went to Central America, where he acquired material for another series of lectures. In 1861 he was captain of a company (which he had raised) in the 69th regiment of New York volunteers and fought at the first battle of Bull Run; he then organized an Irish brigade, of whose first regiment he was colonel until the 3rd of February 1862, when he was appointed to the command of this organization with the rank of brigadier-general. He took part in the siege of Yorktown, the battle of Fair Oaks, the seven days’ battle before
